Constructing Ethnicity in the Americas: Language, Religion, and German Immigrants in Argentina and Canada, 1880-1930

Benjamin Bryce discusses competing perspectives about the meaning of German ethnicity in the Americas, showing how parents, children, education bureaucrats, and religious leaders understood ethnicity in different ways and, in so doing, slowly created different forms of cultural pluralism. Language and religion stand out as the two central pillars that defined ethnicity for many people, and the fears of community leaders and parents over both linguistic and denominational changes were central preoccupations in both Buenos Aires and Ontario. Benjamin Bryce is a postdoctoral fellow in the department of history at the University of Toronto.